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This is the third article in a series describing the results of regular wetland bird counts in Namibia and groups together inland sites where water is seasonally present as well as three sewage treatment plants. The article gives details for ten sites for which ten or more counts are available up to the end of 2008.

January 2010 announced its arrival with welcome and wide-spread rain throughout Namibia. The result of this was that we were expecting bumper counts at many of the inland wetlands, although the two coastal heavyweights would be expected to contribute the majority in terms of numbers, as usual. During this count cycle 26 sites were counted, an increase on previous counts, in no small part due to the efforts of the Namibia Bird Club that is now counting many wetlands around Windhoek.

This is the second article in a series describing the results of regular wetland bird counts in Namibia and groups together inland sites where water is present most of the time. The article gives details for two perennial river sites and nine dams for which ten or more counts are available up to the end of 2008.

The following is a summary of waterbird count data for selected species in Namibia, covering the period 1977 to December 2008. For each species the Red Data Book (RDB) status, both global and Namibian, is given, the population trend as per Wetlands International, the number of times the species was counted, the number of times it has passed the 1% population criterion, the maximum count and the sites where it has passed the 1% population criterion.

Data on wetland bird numbers has been collected in Namibia on an ad hoc basis since the early 1960's. Since 1991 regular counts have been conducted at several sites and thus a considerable amount of data has accumulated. This article and the ones to follow is a summary of the available data and an attempt to derive population trends for selected wetland bird populations. To date (July 2009), data from 1703 counts at 172 places has been entered into a database. A total of 177 different species of waterbird have been counted at these sites.

During the month of July 2009 volunteers once again participated in the winter wetland bird counts all over Namibia. A total of 27 wetlands were counted resulting in just over 99,000 birds of 87 species. The number of sites being counted is up thanks to the Namibia Bird Club, which is now conducting regular counts at Avis Dam, the Gammams (Windhoek) Sewage Works and Monte Christo. The Walvis Bay Ramsar site tops the list with over 50,000 birds, followed by Sandwich Harbour and the Mile 4 Saltworks.

In more than 100 countries, millions of waterbirds are counted each year. Wetlands International coordinates the International Waterbird Census (IWC) throughout the world and the data is used to e.g. designate Wetlands of International Importance and Important Bird Areas. Namibia has participated in these counts since 1990 and hence a considerable set of data has accumulated. Data is on hand for 1703 (as at July 2009) waterbird counts at 172 sites in Namibia. The earliest counts are from 1976 and a peak in terms of sites counted was reached in 1995 when 73 wetlands were counted…

Poster summarising the results of the 2010 game count in the South.

Game counts in north-west Namibia, June 2010.

Game counts in Bwabwata and Caprivi; dry season, live sightings. showing Numbers seen by conservation area, habitat, compared to 2009, population estimates and trends.

North West game count - map of sightings per species per 2x2km grid cell.

Maps showing live sightings of elephant, giraffe, kudu, roan, sable, buffalo, impala, reedbuck, tsessebe and zebra in the 2010 Caprivi game count.

The survey took two hours 54 minutes, which translates into a search rate of 1.6 km/min. The flight path was recorded on the GPS tracklog and is shown in Figure 2 (deviations from the transects are where rhino, elephant or large herds of animals were encountered). A total of 253 sightings were recorded during this time (Figure 3) which comprised 1539 animals of seventeen species (Table 1). Kaross game camp is 144 km² in size so the density of animals calculates to 10.7 animals/km². The distribution and herd size for selected species is shown in Figure 4 to Figure 11.

This proposed study focuses on the elephants of the Kunene/Etosha cluster. The elephants outside Etosha is still largely a free ranging population over much of a 100 000 km² range. For the purpose of this proposal the study area (Figure 1) encompasses the extreme western area of Etosha, Skeleton Coast Park, communal conservancies, concessions and the private farming land south of Etosha. The average rainfall ranges from <50mm to 300mm. Recently, human-elephant conflicts have received a lot of attention in this Region.